Chapter Text
It starts like this:
You are seventeen years old, and your father sits you down at the rickety old dining table, and he tells you that you have to go to war. Orders, perhaps, but you believe that is too strong a word for the weathered old man sitting across from you. You love him, your father.
So you go.
You are seventeen, and you’ve entered a warzone, and it is tough. Made tougher by the fact that you are fighting once-allies, ones who you don’t recognise personally but have known friends of the same heritage. You know how to kill, now. It is not something you take pleasure in, and never will be.
You meet a boy there, in your barracks, after a long day of fighting people who could’ve been comrades. He is a part of the brotherhood, but he is not your brother. Your eyes linger on strands of golden blonde hair and sharply hazel eyes and long, delicate fingers that are strangely unmarred by callouses.
That will change. War will change it. You know this, but you do not say it.
He makes you laugh, and you tell him that in your language, his name means moon. He speaks with a sharp tongue to everyone else, but he shares secrets as soft as gossamer under the cover of night with you. You feel special for the first time in your seventeen years. It is nice.
You know you cannot count on it being nice forever.
He survives, your moon. He survives the first day, and the next, and the next, and eventually you have survived so many together that it feels natural and expected. The fear is there, but it has lessened, and you find yourself smiling more often than not.
That is a mistake. You do not know it yet, but it is.
War continues. The days fly by in a haze of blood, redredredred. But at night, you and your moon sit together under the covers, and you talk. You share whispers and laughter and you hold hands. It is enough. It is enough until it isn’t, enough until a year has passed and your moon slides a ring of twine onto your finger.
You are eighteen years old, and you are married to your moon. It is fast, but you do not know how to be slow after a year of bloodshed. He does not either. Your moon has never been patient.
You fight, and you love, and you call him your husband . He smiles at that before he kisses you, long and soft and sweet and like the things of the world that you had forgotten. There is not much cause for long and soft and sweet on a battlefield.
You are eighteen, and your husband falls in a fight, and there is so much blood. You hate the colour red, now. You have always hated it, or you feel like you must’ve, because there is not a life beyond this horrible war. Your husband lives, and you are happy. You rejoice. You are not as careful with your own life as you are with his, because he is your husband, and you would rather tear yourself apart than let him hurt.
That is a mistake, but you will never consider it one.
It ends like this:
You are nineteen years old, and you go out to battle. A messenger arrives at your barracks a moment too late, offering news that the war is over. Your husband marches beside you, and your hands catch and tangle together even when they are not supposed to. No one says anything. They have learnt to allow what small joys can be gleaned from this miserable existence.
So you are happy.
You are nineteen, and you see the arrow before your husband, and it is not even a thought. Not even a choice before you have moved, allowed the arrow to meet its mark right in your throat. You choke.
Dying hurts.
But you see him, your husband. He is crying, and you cry with him, because you know he is upset and you cannot fix it this time. Your hand is bloody as you cradle his face. You whisper assurances to your husband, and you tell him that you love him.
It is not enough. It cannot save you. But it eases the pain on your husband, your moon’s face, and so you think it worth it. And this is how it ends, two lovers intertwined on a battlefield with tears dripping down their faces.
It is over.